Greenstorm's Journal

I was going to write something, wrote this instead: https://landracegardening.discourse.group/t/done-by-equinox-direct-seed-northern-squash-project/147

The title doesn't really require an explanation anyhow.

I'm writing up more of my variety trials now: starting on the squash and corn. I cannot adequately describe how much joy this brings me: to have access to these varieties, to have done this trial, to spend time thinking about comparisons between plants and fitness for my purposes and variability across years, to write up my thoughts, and even in some cases to talk to other folks who are doing something similar. Soon I will even have my own crosses! It's just the best thing. It anchors me with immense gravity to this second in time, neither to the future nor the past, because I want to fully experience the *now* of this process. It's so good.

Our third first frost scare is coming up in half a week or so. One of these is going to be The One. I didn't do much for the previous two but I'm giving serious thought to pulling all the green tomatoes for this weekend.

Given the size of the trial it hasn't been very productive but that is kind of the point: the entire harvest came from fewer than half the plants, and half the harvest will have come from maybe 10 or fewer of the 55. If I plant those productive ones in the same space next year I'll be swimming in tomatoes.

A bunch have made it onto the permanent list:

Minsk early is the earliest of prolific tomatoes, more on the acid side but wins for sheer quantity.

Bloody butcher is the earliest. It drops off in production after that but that's ok.

Mikado black is really tasty, and has a good balance of ripening fully within season/producing several lovely unblemished fruit/tastes good.

Taiga is not very productive but it ripens and is tasty.

Cole, Glacier (unevenly sized), Moravsky Div, Cabot, and Katja (large fruit but may need to ripen inside) all go into the pretty productive/not necessarily the best flavour but they sure put out fruit that can ripen category. Stupice doesn't compete as well as I thought in there. Silvery Fir Tree will be a little on the later side, along with Katja, but does have a lot of fruit set.

Karma miracle ripened some and is prett tasty; I may have missed some fruit since it retains a lot of green when ripe.

My grocery store green cherry performed well and is tasty. It stays.

Sweet apertif did ripen some this year. Matt's wild cherry and Sweet cherriette ripened outdoors at the same time and had similar fruit: Matt's was an enormous sprawling plant that should have been on an edge and Sweet Cherriette was very compact and determinate.

A bunch didn't do as well as I'd like:

Galina was tasty but is just starting to ripen yellow cherries, it seems late for cherries? I may try it again but not super sold on it.

A bunch just didn't set much fruit at all. Cherokee chocolate comes to mind particularly.

Northern ruby paste started setting very late, as did old italian pink. Alas.

Northern Sun ripened one fruit per plant that I could see. It's normally a little more reliably early? Maybe it needs to be deflowered when planted.

Lime green salad doesn't seem to have ripened this year, we'll see when I go in to pull the plants. It was one of the few to ripen outdoors two years ago after being frosted back in June. Maybe another try? It tastes good. It didn't ripen on the deck or in the field though. Very nice bush form.

Czech bush ripened a couple fruits early on and then just... slowed way down, I'm not sure it'll give me many more big enough to ripen indoors even. Very strange. Too bad, it is a very nice plant form.

The panamorous tomatoes, in which I'm including exserted orange, had the most reliably producing row. A couple plants were pretty loaded down but especially exserted orange just kept trickling them out. Some plants did nothing, one looks like it did some small green weird fruit -- that's the wild genes -- and I'm looking very much forward to planting my saved seeds from them next year and seeing what happens. I have two seeds stuck to a piece of paper from a tomato that only had two seeds on it, the paper reads "zesty yum! best"

There is a single tomato in the corn patch that volunteered from, I guess, grocery store fruit seeds and looks like it'll ripen. I'll keep seeds from it too.

There's more, but basically I've learned a ton and am very happy with this knowledge. Still need to rate everything on some basic features: earliness, reliability (if I have multiple plants of that variety), flavour, yield, plant shape/ease of cultivation.

It looks like I may have enough squashes ripen, or close-enough-finish-indoors ripen, to be able to evaluate those. Most of the grains are cut. but I still have triticale, rivet wheat, ladoga, korassan, and the two late-planted cedar isle wheats to harvest. OF my three varieties of pickling cuke I think I can eliminate boston, which is producing well now but was last to start compared to Morden and National. Sweet success was absolutely the best slicing cuke, I think because pollination in the greenhouse was an issue and it's parthenocarpic. Suyo long will get another chance.

Famosa F2 cabbage was first to head, and made small savoyed heads with lots of earthworms in them. Sorrento rapini was an excellent early veg and should be generously seeded until it volunteers, it far outdid conventional broccolis or even kinda-conventional broccolis. Mammoth red rock cabbage was slow to head and maybe is more reliable than copenhagan market? Copenhagan market has a couple huge heads out there and some small ones.

It wasn't a great bean year, and I'm still sorting out my favas. They fell over. Russian black looked like they'd be done first since they podded up first, but the lofthouse ones may be ripening first.

No word on the flour corns yet, I'm letting them go as long as possible.

The beauregarde soup peas did a truly fantastic job. Small plants of maybe 8", not vining or climbing at all, lots of peas per plant. I want to experiment with more soup peas. I get along with them better than I do with beans anyhow.

This is a reminder to plant more basil next time.

Ronde de nice zucchini has just started pumping out fruit in the last two weeks. Maybe it needed much more rain? I think the pollinators were pretty sparse in the main garden this year so that may be it too, or they needed a specific temp to pollinate that I was not getting. The field squash didn't start to take till a little later either, even with and pollination.

I'm very excited to see what I get for squash next year since I have at least a couple different ones that definitely cross-pollinated. The lofthouse squash, sundream, burgess buttercup, gete oksomin, and especially North Georgia Candy Roaster are on the list.

Yesterday we pretty much finished rendering the soap lard, and I have a 5 gallon bucket full of it. It's a good thing I love making soap; also what an amazing object to have! Overnight last night/tonight the cooking lard from leaf fat is rendering.

21 500ml and 8 750ml jars of stock are done and in the pantry.

Cheryl has been given her meat for the chicken trade; Ron has not yet.

Tomorrow the coppas actually go into cure and 3 more primals get broken down. The pace is slowing.

The chickens hopped the fence yesterday and were in the grain trial so I chased them out, then we harvested eveything that was ripe. That means amolinka, bishop, Ble de arcour einkorn, blue durum, ceres, marquis (pr seeds planted May 6 but not the cedar isle stuff planted may 11), pelisser, pembina, reward, and white sonora. Pelissier and blue durum are exceptionally beautiful: almost lavender coloured heads with dark awns. The einkorn was green long after the other wheats started to go golden, but it was as ready as the rest of them yesterday.

Still remaining in the grain trial is rivet (which I love and really want to ripen), rouge de bordeaux, braveheart triticale, and khamut from salt spring seeds. Also the two cedar isle patches, AC andrews and marquis, are still unripe.

There were a couple stray bits of ergot in a couple of the wheats, and also in one barley. The triticale has a bunch. It seems to be easy to pick out since it replaces the grain with a huge black fungal body, and I'm further told that it floats where the rest of the grain will sink.

I brought in a bunch of broccoli raab seeds from the sorrento from William Dam seeds. I made no effort to keep it from cross-pollinating with other brassicae but I think only radishes were also blooming at that time, if anything. It'll be interesting to see. The ones I let go to seed in the greenhouse have dropped their seeds and are trying to grow me some of a fall crop already, though it may be too late for that.

The crock got half-filled with cucumber pickles. I'm pretty happy with the way the cucumbers turned out. They're very sweet compared to bought ones, except for a single bitter one (we cut off the very end and tasted them all out of curiosity). I grew boston, national, and morden pickling cukes this year. National produced first, morden and national were similar in production. Boston started later but seems to be ripening more all at once; Aug 23 or so was the first serious pick from it so it might not make it in a cooler summer.

I brought in several lovely ripe mikado black tomatoes the other day from both deck and field. I think it's in the lead as the best black tomato here this year. The tomatoes are fairly sizeable, slicers, and have great form. I will be tasting them soon. Meanwhile cabot, glacier, minsk early (the most productive) and moravsky div have set and will ripen large quantities of fruit each. Matt's wild cherry is finally hitting its stride. Katja probably will, as likely will silvery fir tree and a couple others. I think the trial can be considered a success: I learned a lot a lot a lot. The chickens have discovered the garden and are helping me eat tomatoes. Boo.

I harvested several unripe North Georgia Candy roaster squash from the vines and ate them like zucchini in a pasta sauce the other day. That was really good. I also tucked some into the pickling crock and am curious how that goes down. A lot of the squash look pretty immature, we'll see how much more heat we get this year to ripen. In future I might try to grow them up a trellis on the inside of the greenhouse/woodshed. Of the squash trials, burgess buttercup started putting out female fruit and squash earliest. Several of the kuris and the lofthouse squash are catching up, and gete oksomin and north georgia candy roaster seem to be doing ok. Fingers crossed I get some seed from something to plant next year. Again no attempt to keep things from pollinating each other; it was a hard pollinator year I think too. Likely that's because it was so warm then so cold then so warm over and over.

Though maybe bees should be in my three year plan. I'm getting some honey from a friend who has bees in town. I bet she could teach me.

I need to remember to call the bird butcher in Smithers to set a time for ducks and geese.